Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA) and Amdocs Ltd. (NYSE: DOX) keep things simmering in today's visit to the bespoke EMEA news kitchen.

Alcatel-Lucent has upgraded Oni Communications 's fiber link between Lisbon and Badajoz in Spain to 100Gbit/s with its single carrier system. AlcaLu supplied the Portuguese alternative operator with its 1626 Light Manager enhanced with 100Gbit/s Coherent technology through the 1830 Photonic Service Switch. (See Oni Does 100G With AlcaLu, FTTH Europe: Now That's What I Call Broadband and Portugal 'Gets' FTTH.)

U.K. incumbent BT has clinched a juicy £45 million (US$70 million), seven-year managed services deal with Asian brokerage CLSA. BT's Unified Trading system for trading communications forms the heart of the agreement, along with firewall services, application optimization, device management and maintenance. (See BT Sees Results From Its Vertical Leap.)

The potential of "white space" technology, which uses spare TV spectrum for mobile broadband, has been further demonstrated in a trial carried out by TTP in Cambridge, U.K. A link between TTP's R&D center in Cambridge and the nearby village of Orwell achieved speeds of 8 Mbit/s over a distance of 5.6 kilometers. The full results of the trial are to be presented today at a meeting attended by various very interested parties, among them the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) , Sky , BT, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK). (See TTP Demos White Space Broadband, Microsoft Leads UK White Space Consortium, TV White Space Startup Raises $12.8M and Cable Worried About 'White Space' Tech.)

Amdocs is to deliver and integrate a new inventory management system for Virgin Media Inc. (Nasdaq: VMED). The new Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) system is designed to help the U.K. cable operator improve its network planning, design and assurance, so reducing order fallouts, shortening outages and avoiding network congestion. (See Virgin Media Deploys Amdocs OSS.)

The European Union antitrust authority has temporarily called a halt to its review of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s proposed takeover of Motorola Mobility LLC , reports Bloomberg, while it waits for "certain documents" pertaining to the deal to arrive on its desk. (See Google Didn't Want All of Motorola Mobility , Google-Moto Deal Fans Cable Fears , Google & Moto: Beyond the Patently Obvious and What Google-Moto Means for Microsoft.)

The European Commission wants to make access to public data easier and cheaper, a move that, it believes, could enhance (among other things) smartphone applications and boost the region's annual trade by tens of billions of euros, reports Reuters.

The BBC has tweaked its popular iPlayer TV catch-up service so that it can run on 3G networks, though initially it will only be available on Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) devices, reports ... oh, the BBC! An analyst quoted in the story fears some bill-shock could be heading users' way.

Ascom , the Sweden-based wireless systems vendor, has opened a test center at the Mera Networks Inc. labs in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. Mera will provide a range of equipment testing services. (See Ascom Opens Russian Test Center.)

Orange France has launched a "Fibre Pro" service, offering 100Mbit/s broadband to small businesses, with prices starting at €69 ($91) per month.

InfoVista SA , the French Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) vendor, has raised a few eyebrows by suspending its shares on Monday. Is a sale in the wind? (See What's Up at InfoVista?) — Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading